I want to book my US ticket

ARON Baynes says his sights are still firmly set on rekindling his NBA dream.

Brisbane’s biggest banger believes he is only scratching the surface of what he is capable of as he continues to retrain his body into a finelytuned basketball machine.

It’s been a little over 16 months since Baynes suffered internal bleeding that was putting pressure on his spinal cord when he was found on a bathroom floor during the Tokyo Olympics.

He’s played 10 games for the Bullets this season and is fifth in the league in rebounds at 8.3 per game but said, much like his team, he was yet to reach full fitness.

“I’ve got a lot of room for improvement,” Baynes said.

“The body, it was out of basketball for a little while, and there’s no substitute for basketball fitness, getting up and down and playing games.

“I know I can get a lot better and that comes with consistency.”

The 36-year-old said while his focus remained on helping the Bullets recover from a 4-9 start, he still has designs on returning to the NBA, where he played 522 games with five franchises and won a title in San Antonio.

“If I’m not trying to get to the NBA, if I’m not trying to get to the highest level when I’m playing professional sport, then I think there’s something wrong with why I’m playing,” Baynes said.

“I always want to compete against the best and that, right now, is playing in the NBL.

“But if you’re not striving to play against the best, then I think you’re not putting your best foot forward.

“The NBA’s definitely a goal and it will always be a goal as long as I’m playing professionally.”

So have NBA teams been in touch? He’s leaving that in the hands of super agent Daniel Moldovan.

“Fortunately, that’s why I’ve got an agent, I give him the free reign to do whatever he has to do and I just focus on myself and my team,” he said.

Late last month, the Bullets sacked coach James Duncan and brought in club legend Sam Mackinnon as interim.

Baynes said Duncan’s departure was an unfortunate element of the pressure of pro sport.

“At the end of the day our record’s not what we wanted it to be and that’s the thing with professional sport – at some point they’re going to have to make a change and unfortunately it was the call with JD,” Baynes said.

Moldovan, earlier this year, tweeted Baynes would not be at the Bullets without the work of Mackinnon as general manager.

“Sam’s got that something extra in terms of he was the best player in the NBL for a few years when he was playing, so it’s always good to have a guy like that on the sideline, on your team in your ear,” Baynes said.

Brisbane has been ravaged by injuries and took more than a month to replace import Devondrick Walker, who was cut in early November.

But the Bullets’ new man

Andrew White III is a face familiar to Baynes. The pair, in 2017, spent time in training camp together in Boston.

“It’s one of those things where basketball’s a really small world,” he said.

“He has some tools that can really help us.”

The club must now integrate White and get healthy to make an unlikely run to the top six.

“We haven’t been able to have the consistent group that we want out there but, at the time, we’ve got to be better,” Baynes said.

“It doesn’t matter who’s playing well at the beginning, you want to be playing well at the end.

“We still have enough time to do it, we’ve just got to start putting it into action right now.”